


But Let Us Begin

by mrs_leary (julie)



Category: Merlin (TV) RPF
Genre: Boston, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:41:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2807936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/mrs_leary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Bradley tracks down Colin in Boston, and asks something that's been weighing on his mind for seven years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But Let Us Begin

**Author's Note:**

> Otherwise known as 'Guess where Mrs L went for her holidays!' 
> 
> Written for the **merlinrpf** mini bang 2014.

# But Let Us Begin

## 2 January 2016

This could be the most significant day of Bradley James’ life. 

He tried not to think too hard about that as, for the twelfth time, he checked the address he’d scribbled down on a scrap of paper. But of course he’d got the right house. The taxi driver had dropped him at the corner of the block, as requested, and had pointed him in the right direction. The street number was pretty much branded onto Bradley’s mind. Despite which, he stood there on the sidewalk and checked it yet again, before looking around casually as if he did this sort of thing all the time. 

This was a nice neighbourhood, Bradley thought. Not that he knew Boston, so he didn’t have other neighbourhoods to compare it to. But the houses were well-kept, and charming in a very New England way. Boxy, but clad in wooden planks, with each house painted a different colour. Most of them were finished off in white for the window frames and eaves and balustrades. 

The house he was standing before had its walls painted in a dark grey that was just a bit mauve, with crisp white round all the edges, and a maritime blue neatly picking out a few features. That third colour pushed it one step ahead of most of the others. 

Well. It was time to man up and quit admiring the architecture. Bradley took a breath, and walked up the short path, and then jogged up the few steps to the front door. Another breath, and he found the courage needed to ring the doorbell. Another breath. 

He was going to hyperventilate any moment now. 

Bradley had no idea who to expect, and even less idea whether they’d recognise him. This was some branch of the Morgan family he’d hardly known existed before hearing that Colin had come here for a week or more to be near his parents – who were staying elsewhere – for his birthday. Someone in this lot was the first cousin once removed of someone else… Bradley hadn’t paid too much attention to all that. 

So perhaps it was just as well that after a footfall or two inside, and a muffled exchange called out, it was Colin himself who opened the door. 

“Hi,” said Bradley with what he tried to make his brightest smile. 

Colin just stood there staring at him, absolutely blank for a long horrible moment. Bradley’s stomach dropped like he was in freefall. Colin seemed to be having one of those moments in which you see someone you know should be familiar, but in a completely different context, and you can’t quite place them. 

“This is a bad time,” Bradley said, his brightness turning somewhat brittle. 

“No –” Colin sketched a grin. “Bradley –”

“Hello.”

“Hello!” came the slightly warmer reply. Colin glanced back into the house, from whence came the distant sounds of life continuing as normal, at least for some people. He was obviously trying to decide whether to haul Bradley in and introduce him, offer him coffee and so on and so forth, or –

Bradley stuttered out, “I didn’t want to intrude, I know you’re here with family, you have this family thing going on –”

“No, if I’d known you were in town, I’d have invited you yesterday. Bit of a shindig, you know.”

“I know.” Bradley nodded. “Happy birthday,” he offered. “Wishes belated, but from the –” _heart_. He’d been going to say _from the heart_ , for god’s sake. “Sorry,” he mumbled instead.

“No, look –” Colin still seemed in a bit of a conundrum about what to do. 

Bradley finally noticed that a coat and a backpack hung from one of Colin’s hands. “Ah. You’re going out.”

“Yes. No.” Another glance back over his shoulder. “Maybe you should come in.”

“I don’t want to get in the way of your plans. I can come back later – another day – We could meet somewhere else –”

Colin looked at him impatiently, and Bradley told himself to shut up before he dug himself in any deeper. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets, and they each stared at the other, at an impasse. 

Finally Colin said, “You’d better come out with me, then. If you want to?”

“Sure,” said Bradley, trying to keep his suddenly renewed hope within reasonable bounds.

“You don’t even know where we’re going.”

“Nevertheless. Lay on, MacDuff.” He was ambushed by a blush. “Well, you know: _Lead_ on.”

Colin’s grin was a more genuine now. He turned to call back inside, “I’m off out now!” There was a muffled query in a strong accent, to which Colin replied, “No, it was for me, anyway.” Another remark was made, which Bradley couldn’t interpret at all. Colin grinned wider, and cried, “Yeah, don’t wait up!” Which Bradley found entirely heartening. 

Then Colin was stepping out onto the porch beside Bradley, and pulling the door closed behind him. He paused with the backpack at his feet to shrug on his coat and do it up, pull a beanie hat out of a pocket and tug it on. And then finally Colin slung the backpack over his shoulder and led the way down the steps and along the path before turning right on the sidewalk. 

Bradley fell into step beside him, and for a few moments they strode on in a companionable silence. The atmosphere between them eased, as if it were that easy to fall back into their old familiar rhythms. 

“You know,” said Bradley, as they reached the next block, “no matter how long it is since I last saw you, it always feels like yesterday.”

Colin didn’t say anything to this, but he smiled at Bradley, a small but happy smile. “I was gonna go to the JFK Museum. You know, the Presidential Library and Museum…?” A sidelong glance at Bradley to see how he took this. “Not that I’m gonna be browsing the Library as such, but I wanted to go round the Museum, so.” Another wary glance. “He’s a bit of a hero of mine.”

“Pilgrimage, then, is it?”

“Sort of. I guess.” Colin added with a hint of self-consciousness, “It was my thirtieth birthday yesterday, you see.”

Bradley turned self-conscious, too. “I am aware of it,” Bradley replied, caught somewhere between sincerity and irony. That was why he had come to Boston, after all; Colin must realise that well enough, even though neither of them had directly raised the matter. Well. There was no point rushing into things, after all, when the rest of their long lives stretched ahead of them. 

“Look,” Bradley finally continued. “I’m not usually into politicians, but he’s a bit of a hero of mine, too. I should think most people admire him, don’t they? So if you don’t mind me being there, I’d like that. And I’ll try not to get in the way.”

Colin considered him for a moment as they continued down the sidewalk, matching each other’s pace perfectly. “I’d like that, too, and you won’t.”

♦

They caught a train, which after a few stops went underground; a few stops later they changed to a different line. Bradley let Colin organise all that, let the details blur past him. He’d never have been able to retrace his steps. 

They talked about ordinary things, catching each other up on their own news, and reports of what their mutual friends had been doing. Colin still wasn’t into social media, so he was generally across the big stuff, but Bradley filled in some trivia he’d gleaned from Twitter, and they shared the confidences exchanged in person or on the phone. They didn’t talk about anything overly serious. Colin, of course, was full of hopes and dreams – may as well call them plans, Colin being who and what he was – for the roles he wanted to play, the projects he wanted to be part of. Bradley had more modest ambitions, and tended not to plan ahead too far, but he was doing all right for himself. He was definitely making it as a working actor, and it was a long while since he’d hoped for anything more. Maybe that… Yes, it was probably time that changed. 

It had been a grey overcast day that morning. As the train emerged from underground, Bradley saw that the clouds had lowered and were now threatening rain. Still, that didn’t seem to dampen Colin’s mood. Bradley remained anxious, of course, but Colin seemed so comfortable with him now, and every so often Bradley would meet his gaze, which was unshuttered, and then Bradley would glimpse a certain warm gentleness in Colin’s smile, and he would relax for a little while – until he remembered, again, why he was there, and his heartbeat clicked up a notch faster. 

They transferred from the train to a free shuttle bus, striding out with heads down and shoulders hunched through the open spaces, to minimise the effects of a few drops of rain. The bus took them south into a large campus – Boston was known for colleges, Bradley remembered, and an alarmingly intelligent population – and eventually the two of them disembarked before a clean white modern building with a dark glass annexe almost as tall as the rest. Having enjoyed the quaint houses, and been daunted by what looked like bulky, low–rise office blocks throughout the campus, Bradley was pleasantly surprised by the pristine and not-too-large, not-too-small nature of the museum. 

“Cool, isn’t it?” Colin said. 

“Very,” Bradley agreed. 

But there was no denying that Colin became a bit remote again as they walked across the forecourt, after all the friendly easy chat during their journey. Obviously this really was a very personal visit for Colin, and Bradley should count himself honoured to be a part of it. 

♦

Colin paid for their tickets, despite Bradley’s protests, and they were ushered into a small cinema to watch a short introductory film. Within moments, Bradley exchanged an impressed glance with Colin. There was no voiceover, no talking heads on the film; nothing had been recreated. The story of JFK’s life was simply being told, economically yet movingly, using images and sound from the time. It could hardly have been more effective. 

When the film ended with JFK’s nomination as presidential candidate, Bradley wasn’t the only one who sulked out loud. “Hey, I wasn’t finished yet!”

Colin offered a sympathetic smile. “That’s where the exhibition picks up the story.” 

Bradley sighed heavily, reluctant to even get out of his chair. The film had been that good. “All right, all right,” he grumbled, finally standing up. It was that or risk losing Colin as he wandered off. “I’m coming!”

They headed down into the exhibits, which began with the presidential campaign. It was interesting to see how the tv cameras had loved Jack far more than they’d loved Nixon – and JFK had known just how to work them, too. 

Colin didn’t stay too long in those first rooms, but drifted steadily on, leaving Bradley to follow in his wake. Once they were into the White House years, Colin slowed down again, considering some of the rich and occasionally bizarre gifts from foreign diplomats. The two of them gaped and stared like schoolboys at the actual space capsule in which Alan Shepard became the first American to travel in space. “It’s tiny!” Bradley protested. 

“We’d never fit in,” Colin murmured. 

Bradley took the opportunity to cast a significant glance at Colin’s narrow hips – and when Colin turned self-conscious, Bradley could feel his own face warming. He tried to speak, to come up with some kind of witty remark, but he had nothing. Absolutely nothing. 

“Too tall,” Colin said, and wandered on. Bradley followed him, as if attached by an invisible rope. 

There was stuff about Jackie Kennedy and her revamp of the White House, her visit to India, her horses. The official exhibits became more personal again. There was one about the Kennedy family’s love of the sea – which, after all, Bradley reflected, you could hardly get away from in Boston. The ocean or the bay were everywhere you turned, and it seemed that the river was large enough for sailing as well. Colin lingered over those panels, pushing up close to consider every detail of the images with his nose only a few inches away. 

Eventually Colin turned to find Bradley loitering behind him, and gestured at a photo of a small yacht slicing across the bay. “That’s his boat _Victura_ ,” Colin said. “His dad gave it to him for his fifteenth birthday.” 

“Nice.”

“Yeah. He loved it. Sailed it when he could, all the rest of his life.” 

Bradley nodded. He himself couldn’t sail, but he’d been out on the water a handful times, in boats of one sort or another. The one thing that held all those experiences together, and made him yearn for a more thorough understanding of Jack’s love of sailing, was that as soon as the land fell away behind him, it was as if all his cares fell away, too, like a heavy old coat at last slipping back off his shoulders. Every time, even the first when he hadn’t expected it. It was better than magic. It was real. 

“The actual boat’s on display here, in the grounds, in summer.” 

“Not today, then?” Bradley asked, disappointed. 

“Not today.” 

Colin turned away, and Bradley was just about to follow him – but then Colin stalled, and turned back again, catching his lower lip in his teeth as he mused over something. After a moment he lifted a considering look at Bradley. “There’s a pier just beyond here, along the waterfront. Not huge, but it goes a fair way out.” 

This sounded like it was going to be interesting. Bradley nodded encouragingly. 

“Some say… that if you go out to the end of it on a misty day… especially on one of those foggy days, when it’s so thick you can’t even see the shore when you look back, but just hear the water lapping against the rocks, lapping against the wooden piles…”

Bradley nodded again, his skin prickling. 

“They say that you might see a boat going by, the _Victura_ , sails full of a breeze that you can’t feel, and there’s sunshine on the face of the man who steers it.” 

“Happy, then, is he?” Bradley asked, caught somewhere between pleasure and scepticism, with the hairs on his nape standing up. 

“Mate, he’s in heaven,” Colin replied. 

They looked at each other for a long silent moment then, Colin remaining utterly deadpan, and Bradley feeling too much gooseflesh to just shrug this off. But then at last Colin cracked into a grin and a guffaw, and Bradley managed to scoff a laugh, and the ordinary world resettled itself about them. 

“As long as he’s happy,” Bradley affirmed. “ _Is_ that what they say, or did you just make it up?”

Colin shrugged in a bashful kind of way. “Yeah, I made it up.” 

“That was good.” They didn’t move on, though, so after a moment Bradley asked, “Why do you care about him so much?”

Colin shrugged again, rather less charmingly. “Guess it’s the Irish thing.”

“Yeah. It’s the American thing for me. But he tried to do good, didn’t he? Even if it was doomed.” 

“We have to remember,” Colin said thickly, “it doesn’t have to be doomed.” And at last he turned and walked away. 

♦

They entered an unlit black corridor, with just the date _22 November 1963_ placed high on the wall in a silver that glimmered like tears. 

They turned past this, and walked along a wall set with a handful of monitors which played a news broadcast from that day, the one where the announcer himself was damp-eyed, and had to pause before speaking. “President Kennedy died at one pm Central Standard Time. Two o’clock Eastern Standard Time, some thirty-eight minutes ago.” Bradley was damp-eyed himself, and he figured Colin was, too, no matter how often he’d visited this place. 

The two of them walked steadily on, and emerged into a display about the legacy of the Kennedy administration. Which was heartening, but then there was Robert Kennedy’s death to deal with as well, and of course there was a reason why only Caroline Kennedy and not John Jr appeared in the final video about the Museum. Bradley and Colin didn’t linger, but passed slowly and quietly through the remaining exhibits. 

And then they emerged into the most amazing space which soared above them. It was the dark glass annexe, of course, but despite Bradley having seen it from the outside and therefore half-expecting it, the room itself took his breath away. He remembered reading that cathedrals were designed to have a physical effect on you, and that was certainly happening here. 

They wandered further in, towards some words inscribed high on the internal white wall. Bradley murmured them out loud. _“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”_

Bradley turned away, unbearably moved by the vision embodied in the man. He stared at the Boston city skyline distant across the water. And then he turned again to follow Colin, who was moving towards the far corner, where there were benches in the same dark stone as the floor. They sat next together, and looked out at the bay and the distant land. 

It seemed that Colin was just as moved, and Bradley sensed that for once Colin’s barriers were flat. Maybe not all of them, but Colin had rarely seemed so… vulnerable. However, it also seemed that Colin’s mood had little if anything to do with Bradley being there. 

Bradley sighed. 

Colin eventually lifted a hand towards the grass just outside the window, and murmured, “When the boat’s here… the _Victura_ … it’s just out there. On blocks. They have it at a tilt as if it’s flying before the wind.”

Bradley let a few beats go by. And then he said, “You actually don’t know why I’m here, do you?”

Colin glanced at him askance, which was answer enough. 

Bradley sighed again. “I know it’s not fair of me to ask you right now, and I know I should go down on one knee –” Bradley instead turned towards Colin, and reached to take Colin’s nearest hand in both of his. “Colin – Cols – would you marry me?”

Colin was stunned. “What?”

“I want us to get married.”

Silence. Just that stunned expression. 

Well. Bradley let go of Colin’s hand. “I guess that’s a no, then.”

A long moment stretched in which Colin tried to find his voice. “It’s not, but…”

“But?”

“You’ve gotta admit… that was a bit unexpected.” Colin continued a little stronger: “You didn’t think of asking me out on a date first?” 

“I’ve thought about a lot of things these last seven years,” Bradley replied in quite reasonable tones. “But mostly about marrying you. Don’t you remember, that first year we met…? Civil partnerships were this whole new thing, and…” 

At last Colin finally clicked – and he groaned, though the frustration seemed directed at his own obtuseness. “We said we could marry each other once we turned thirty, if there was no one else.” 

“Exactly. We can even marry properly now. I haven’t been with – anyone. Since my thirtieth.” 

Colin cast him a curious glance. “You’ve been without –?” 

“I’ve been waiting. Just in case.” 

“So you were serious?” Colin ventured rather tentatively. “Even back then?”

Which caused Bradley one hell of a pang. “Yeah, I was.” He dared to ask, “Weren’t you?”

It was Colin who sighed now. He turned away for a moment, but then turned back again almost right away. “Bradley. I can’t answer you right this minute. It’s a lot. A lot to think about.” 

“Is that a maybe, then?” 

Colin looked at him, and huffed a laugh. “It’s not a no. That’s about all I can say right now.” 

“That’s plenty,” Bradley replied, the relief going so deep he felt dizzy with it. 

“You’re absolutely mad,” Colin told him. 

Bradley managed a somewhat shaky smile in response. 

And Colin, reassuringly, reached to take one of Bradley’s hands and enfold it in his. Just for a moment, but then Bradley felt the memory of that warm pressure linger after, as if not only their past selves but their future selves were holding hands. His soul had never known such peace. 

♦

They ended up sitting there for so long that a security guard finally came by and announced that it was getting on for closing time. 

They blinked, and the world returned around them. “Thank you,” Colin said politely, just as Bradley was saying, “Thanks.” Together they got up and wandered off, climbing the stairs to the foyer, with the hush of the annexe slowly being replaced by an everyday bustle. 

The two of them were quiet together, both kind of somewhere between feeling comfortable and utterly rocked. They walked outside – and it was like emerging into a brand new day. Everything was wet and fresh with rain, but the clouds had blown over, there was a fresh breeze and the sky above them was a gorgeous bright blue. Colin chuckled under his breath, and shook his head, his lips curved in an irrepressible smile. 

They drifted to a halt on the forecourt. Colin laughed with an uncomplicated happiness, and Bradley couldn’t help but smile in response – even as he wondered, not too seriously, whether he should feel foolish. But then Colin turned to him, and slipped a hand around Bradley’s nape – and Colin leaned in to kiss him, gently at first… and then boldly. 

Bradley’s breath was snatched away once more, and he anchored himself with hands at Colin’s waist, while Colin’s other arm wound around him and reeled him in. The kiss was profoundly kind, lovingly generous, and everything that Bradley had ever hoped for. 

Eventually they parted again, and it seemed that Colin was uninterested in the fact that they’d been witnessed. He was focussed only – delightfully – on Bradley, and that grin of his just would not stop. “It’s still a maybe, though,” Colin said. “For now.”

Faced with a Colin who was broadcasting _happy_ on all channels, Bradley wasn’t fearing the outcome one little bit. “That’s fine. I’ll just ask you again sometime…” He twirled a hand in the air, indicating some indefinite date in the future. Perhaps that evening. Perhaps a month or even a year from now. 

“That’s cool. We’ll start something, and see how we go, yeah?”

“Mate, I think we’ve already started.” Bradley tipped his head back towards the museum. “D’you think he’d mind?” 

Colin’s grin only broadened immeasurably. “I think he’d congratulate us.” 

Bradley felt a laugh bubble out of him. “D’you know, I really think he would.”

And the two of them wandered out into the glorious evening together, hand in hand, without a care in the world. It was better than magic. It was real. 

♦


End file.
